


Bless You, Flower Child

by FlowingRiverAshes



Category: Unus Annus - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Character Death, Ethan and Mark are not dating, Funeral, Hanahaki Disease, Heartache, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sad Fluff, Unrequited Love, Unus Annus, catch me crying in the livestream, catch me crying writing this too tbh, hospital stay, im not okay with that, not sure if I tagged Mika right, oh god the channel is dying this week, proposal, song prompt, written love confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26244376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlowingRiverAshes/pseuds/FlowingRiverAshes
Summary: Ethan was indebted to Mark for flying him out to LA, helping him set up the YouTube career of his dreams, and agreeing to do Unus Annus with him. For being his best friend, his mentor, the person who catapulted him to greatness and supported him in everything he had done or wanted to do in the future, the person who looked at a pimply teenager doing backflips at a panel and saw a younger brother to be loved. He would forever be grateful for everything Mark had done for him. Not that forever would be that long, he thought wryly, looking at the fresh petal in his palm.He'd always wondered what death was like.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson, Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor, Mika Midgett & Ethan Nestor
Comments: 108
Kudos: 310





	1. Silence Isn't Golden

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely a sad indulgent fic because my friend Lorna fucked with my head earlier with her own idea and I just really miss writing Hanahaki stories.

Ethan was indebted to Mark for flying him out to LA, helping him set up the YouTube career of his dreams, and agreeing to do Unus Annus with him. For being his best friend, his mentor, the person who catapulted him to greatness and supported him in everything he had done or wanted to do in the future, the person who looked at a pimply teenager doing backflips at a panel and saw a younger brother to be loved. He would forever be grateful for everything Mark had done for him. Not that forever would be that long, he thought wryly, looking at the fresh petal in his palm. 

It glistened dully with his saliva and what he grimly imagined as the moisture of his lungs, pale pink in color and looking far more innocent than it was resting in his hand. A death sentence in one word, a play in one act, it sat there. It would not be the only one, not even close. 

In the room next door a party was going on, laughter ringing like the peals of bells through the house and landing like the tolls of a funeral gong on Ethan's ears. Of course it would be now, the night when he was supposed to be happier than ever, the night where he had to look the love of his life in his face and wish him the best of luck in the next chapter of his life and be met with the sparkle of eyes glowing with happiness. 

"Let's see it, Amy!" Mika shrieked with delight from the room, and he could picture in his mind's eye the beautiful ring, simple in cut and design just like the man who commissioned it made, being shown off like a prized trophy. It was a prized trophy. The man it tied her to was the prize, the ring a declaration to the world that she had won. 

The petal in his hand was the last place consolation prize, a "thank you for participating but you didn't quite make the cut". 

He shoved the feeling of increasing melancholy back down into his chest and the petal into his pocket and picked up his glass of whiskey discarded in the sudden coughing fit that had racked him a few moments earlier. With a deep sigh he made his way back to the throng of people and was instantly engulfed with cries of "Show Ethan!" and "Where'd you disappear to?" as Mika pulled him forward to show him Amy's ring. 

"It's gorgeous, Ames," he said with a smile, only half faking, and she beamed at him with the smile of a woman who had landed everything she ever wanted in life.

"Thank you, Ethan," she replied. "I heard you helped him pick it out!"

Ah, fuck. Now he had to look up and meet Mark's gaze and God, he really would rather not. But his eyes dragged up anyway and he smiled as large as he could, feeling pierced by the warm brown of his best friend's eyes. "Well yeah, Mark has no taste and I couldn't let him let you down!"

"No taste? You told me I should propose with a Ring Pop," Mark laughed, sending a shooting wave of pain through Ethan's chest. He wanted to cough again, he _needed_ to cough again, but the petal he could feel in his lungs would give so much away that he wasn't ready to face, and so he forced it down with a grimace and pretended to be offended by the memory. 

"I was kidding, you know," he told Amy, who gave him a "sure you were" smirk, and turned away to give someone else the space to congratulate the pair. 

"Are you okay, Eth?" Mika asked, startling him from his thoughts a while later. Almost everyone had left and it was just him, Mika, Mark and Amy left in the house surrounded by discarded party decorations and half-empty cups. The four petals he had coughed up over the course of the night every time Mark smiled at him or laughed at a joke felt like they were burning holes into his pocket.

"Yeah, I guess," he replied after a moment. The drink in his glass looked as murky and uncertain as everything in his head. "Just really introspective tonight."

She sat down next to him and rested her head on his shoulder, the warmth and weight both comforting and claustrophobic. "Thinking about getting engaged?" she asked teasingly holding out her hand in a way that said she was picturing it adorned with a ring. 

He chuckled a little and moved out from under her head, needing to set down his glass and stretch. "Sorry, Mika, but not any time soon," he replied lightly. "I've gotta work through all my own shit before making that kind of commitment."

She downed the rest of her drink and shook her head, soft hair flying about her shoulders. "Nah, I get that. I don't think I'd be ready to say yes anyway."

They looked at each other for a moment, both knowing the other was lying, before the silence was broken by Amy calling to them from another room to help gather the trash from the party. They picked up cups and streamers without another word. Something had changed imperceptibly between them, something that couldn't be fixed. Ethan felt as though the soft pink petals in his pocket were already killing him.

"Hey Ethan, did you want to film something for Unus Annus tomorrow? I had a few ideas to run by you, if that's okay," Mark said from the doorway.

"Yeah, absolutely," Ethan replied, forgetting for just a moment that he was growing sick and needing the euphoric feeling that being in the presence of his friend brought him. "I also had a few ideas for the last month. I want it to be special, you know?"

Mark grinned at him, white teeth shining from tanned skin and stopping the fluttering of Ethan's heart in it's tracks. "You'd know a thing or two about making things special, Eth. See you tomorrow!"

He vanished, likely to the side of his fiancée, and the burning urge to cough returned, more painful than the last and racking Ethan's thin body so hard he nearly doubled over.

The petal this time was red.


	2. Confessional

There was a jar beside Ethan's bed that Mark had given him way back when he had first come to LA. It wasn't really a jar, but he could never find words to describe what it was properly, and so it remained the jar. It was a beautiful piece of glasswork commissioned as a housewarming gift with the gear of his channel on the side and the date of the convention that they met at on the lid.

He'd always appreciated it for its beauty, but had never found anything worthy of being put inside it, so it had been empty for years. Until now.

It had been a month since the engagement party when the first petal had come hurtling out of his mouth, a sealed fate he knew couldn't be escaped. Now the jar was half full of petals of every color, shape and size, a gorgeous rainbow of death. Another two joined the rest as he emptied his pockets. The less he interacted with or thought about Mark, the fewer petals came up, but he found himself loathe to cut the man out of his life completely.

Ironic, really, that the man who'd saved his life would be the reason it ended.

"Eth?" Mika called, shaking him out of his musings. He'd been thinking about death a lot lately and had really been neglecting his relationships, both romantic and not, and he felt bad about what he was going to be putting Mika through. She would find out about the disease eventually, and he didn't want it to be when he nearly choked himself into unconsciousness bringing up an entire rose or something.

He grabbed the jar and made his way out to the kitchen where she stood at the stove in worn out shorts and an oversized sweater making a stir fry for dinner. The smell of soy sauce and cooking vegetables made his stomach growl loudly and she giggled. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I--" he stopped, feeling something heavy in the pit of his stomach that felt suspiciously like dread. "Y'know what, no. I'm really not okay."

The smile slipped off her pretty face and her eyebrows furrowed with concern. "What's wrong?"

Ethan opened his mouth to say something, anything, but there was a lump in his throat and tears stinging at his eyes and he couldn't force anything out. Mika turned off the stove and approached, wrapping him in her arms and squeezing him as tightly as she could. The burning in his lungs returned with a vengeance as he found himself wishing that it were Mark giving him the hug that he so desperately needed, wanting to feel those muscular arms grounding him and the firm heartbeat pounding away in his chest. Instead he buried his face in his girlfriend's neck and cried, overwhelmed by the sadness and the fear.

It felt like someone was ripping his chest open, and not just from the disease. Everything was too raw, too real, and he wished that it would slow down and let him just process for a minute, one minute, before it kept going and never stopped. "I'm sick, Mika," he whispered, and he felt her tighten her hold on him. He didn't deserve her. He didn't deserve any of them, or their love, but least of all her when all he did was love someone else the way she needed him to love her.

"What do you mean, Ethan?" she asked quietly, once his tears had slowed and almost stopped. He pulled away and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt, grimacing at the slimy feeling. "What do you mean you're sick?"

"I... well, I'm really sick, and it's going to eventually kill me," he said weakly. He needed to tell her, needed for her to know that she would lose him, but no matter how he tried he couldn't bring himself to name the disease. Naming it made it real, brought it from his own head into the world and into the life of someone else.

Her hands flew to her mouth as she gasped. "Is it... is it cancer?"

"No," he whispered, gesturing towards the jar he had placed on the counter. Understanding dawned on her face and her own tears rolled down her cheeks as she struggled to find the words. She opened the jar and dumped the petals onto the counter, eyes wide with disbelief at the existence and sheer number of them. There were more than Ethan had thought, pushed down by the weight of the others, permanently vibrant and soft.

The glass jar fell from her hand and Ethan did not have the heart to catch it, watching in numb shock as it shattered on the floor. 

"Hanahaki?" she whispered, more to herself than to him, and the pain in her voice would have caught him off guard if he didn't feel the exact same thing echoing in his chest. "Ethan, why?"

"Why?" he repeated dully, unsure of what she meant. Her emotions flowed over him like water and he wanted both to hold her and to run and never look back. 

"All I have ever done is love you," she replied. She sounded like she wanted to cry, but couldn't. He understood that well enough. "Or... is it not me?"

"It's not you, Mika, I promise. I know you love me and I swear, I love you too, just..."

They stared at each other for a long while, separated by a turbulent ocean of infinite sadness and shards of broken glass. She knew. She understood. She had to, from the way the light that had shone in her eyes just minutes before had vanished.

"Mark." 

The word broke the silence like a gunshot and Ethan winced, reminded of the painful burning in his chest that had not gone away.

"It's Mark, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I should have known." The phrase was said with a deep sigh, the sigh of someone resigned to a fate they had known would come but had not yet accepted. "I never thought it would get this bad, but I should have realized."

"I'm sorry, Mika," he said earnestly. "I never wanted to hurt you."

"No, instead you go and catch a disease nobody can cure. You... god damn it, Ethan. You're going to die."

"Yeah, I know. I've known for a while. I just couldn't say it because saying it made it real and God, do I wish it wasn't real."

Mika retrieved the broom and swept up the glass, trying her best to avoid looking at the bright rainbow of colors strewn across the kitchen counter. "Why did you keep them?"

"I don't know," he admitted, stepping forward to collect them in handfuls and toss them in the trash can. "Maybe to see how much I could take before it got worse."

"And you call Mark the masochist," she joked, and just like that, the ocean was parted and an olive branch offered. He really did not deserve her.

"I can't even argue, this is way worse than pepper spray," he agreed with a smile. "Mika?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. You have to tell Mark."


	3. Heart on a Sleeve

When Mika said that Ethan had to tell Mark, she really meant that he had to tell Mark and Amy, and what she really _really_ meant was that he had to tell them together and he was so not ready for that. Which is, ultimately, how he found himself locked in their bathroom staring into the mirror and trying desperately not to fall into the depths of the panic he could feel creeping up on him.

The man staring back at him was almost unrecognizable. Deep circles lurked under his eyes, his normally perfectly tousled hair was a greasy, floppy mess, and his skin was abnormally pale.

 _I look sick_.

The thought terrified him. The petals now floating somewhere in the LA waste removal system were distant reminders of the pain growing inside his lungs, the roots slowly twisting through his veins and capillaries to strangle him to death, but his own face was right there to tell him that this was real and would never leave him.

“Eth?” Mika said from outside the door, making him jump. She’d been inadvertently doing that a lot lately.

“Yeah?” he replied, shocked by how hoarse his voice sounded. He coughed a bit, regretting it as a sharp pain stabbed through his chest. “Yeah?” he repeated, stronger that time. He could feel her sympathy radiating through the locked door and felt a wave of both appreciation and revulsion. Why couldn’t he just love her, and not be the world’s biggest idiot?

“You okay in there?”

“Yeah, just had to take a minute,” he lied. The ghost in the mirror locked eyes with him and held them as he spoke. “I’ll be out in a second.”

Her footsteps moved away and he heaved a sigh, running a hand through his hair and wincing at the greasy, tangled mess that met his fingers. It was indeed now or never.

Ethan left the safety of the bathroom and made a face at the influx of natural light that met his eyes, slowly making his way down the hall and into the wide-open living room where Amy and Mark sat side by side on the couch, absorbed in an animated discussion with Mika.

Amy’s fingers danced around the nape of Mark’s neck, playing with the curls that rested there and tugging hard on Ethan’s heartstrings.

The conversation stopped as Chica happily made her way to his side, rubbing her soft furry mass up against his leg and making him smile a little as he bent down to pet her.

He knew they were watching him. Examining him, more likely than not, trying to figure out what was wrong before he could say it so that once they knew and had forced him out of their lives they could reminisce and say “I knew he looked off.”

“Is everything okay?” Mark asked, breaking the uncomfortably thick silence that had grown without Ethan realizing it. Soft brown eyes searched his face for a hint of what could be bothering him, making the ache in his chest so much worse with their infinite tenderness and concern.

“I, um… I have something I need to tell you guys,” Ethan replied awkwardly, maneuvering around the couch to plop himself down on the ottoman in front of them. If he stretched out one socked foot he could touch them, but he scooted a bit farther just in case… just in case the loathing they would feel found an outlet.

Amy let her arm fall from behind her fiancé and placed her hands in her lap, uncomfortably aware of Ethan's gaze as she did. She felt almost like she didn't have the right to act like Mark's girlfriend in front of him, she always had, and she wasn’t sure why.

“What’s up, Eth?”

Ethan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m… I’m sick. Really sick. And I know it's hard to believe, but—”

“What kind of sick?” Mark demanded, sitting up. The pain in Ethan's chest tripled in intensity and he found himself clutching at his legs to keep from grabbing at it. “Can it be treated? Do you have the money for it? If not I'd be more than happy to help, you're my best friend and—"

“Mark, stop,” Ethan croaked, tears springing to his eyes at the sheer effort it was taking to not cough.

Mark reached out and grabbed his shoulder, strong hands nearly burning holes through his skin and imprinting deep into his bones. “Ethan, seriously, I want to help.”

Mika reached out and gently removed Mark's hand, trying her best not to cry as Ethan's face turned more and more red from shame and the harshness of the singular urge to cough.

If he could just cough, it would go away for a minute and he could breathe, but doing that would mean he would have to let go of the brightest thing in his life, the one person he would (and did) drop everything for. “Please,” he whispered, seeing black spots at the edges of his vision and feeling his tears roll down his face.

“Mark, stop!” Mika warned, but he broke free of her hold and wrapped the younger man in a hug, crushing him to his chest in the only way he could think of expressing himself.

For just a second, the world held still. The pain in Ethan's lungs vanished, fire licked through his veins, and the scent of plain soap and mint assaulted his nostrils, driving everything else out.

Then, with the force of a train, the pain came back worse than it ever had been, causing him to shove Mark away in a desperate gasp for air. The air didn't come and his vision grew blurry as he frantically tried to cough to no avail.

Was this it? Was this how he would die? _There are worse times to go_ , he thought through the haze.

A solid thump on his back brought his mind swimming back from the brink of consciousness and dislodged the blockage in his throat. With a heavy dry heave, a massive clump of petals hurtled from his mouth and hit the ground. There were at least twenty beautiful white rose petals, maybe more, glistening with saliva and blood.

Against the wood floor, they almost looked innocent, save for the red droplets staining their veins and the sound of Ethan wheezing, too preoccupied with being alive to process much of what had happened.

Mark stepped back as if he'd been slapped, staring at the petals with wide eyes. Amy's hands had flown to her mouth and tears glimmered faintly in her eyes. Mika, who had been the one to hit Ethan's back, was holding him to her chest, gently guiding him through a breathing exercise.

“Hanahaki?” Mark asked after he had calmed down, voice low and deathly quiet. The same voice that sent shivers up Ethan's spine and made him think sinful thoughts was now directed at him for real and it was so incredibly terrifying that he found his hands shaking.

“Yeah,” Ethan whispered, balling his hands up in the soft material of his sweater to hide them. Even the dogs were staying away from him now, the diseased mess that he was, and he didn’t blame them.

“How long?”

“Mark, I don't think—”

“I want to know how long he's been in love with me, Amy. Is that too much to ask?”

“Of fucking course it is, you idiot,” she shot back, tears replaced with a fiery anger. “It doesn’t matter how long he's been like this, just that he is and he's gonna… you know.”

Ethan would have given anything to see his face, even if it meant hacking up more petals. Mark hunched over the back of the couch, face down, shoulders tense, the same way he got when something had gone terribly wrong and he didn't know how to fix it.

“You’re going to die, aren't you?” he asked finally.

Ethan swallowed hard, ignoring the pain from his ripped up throat. Somehow this hurt more than the screaming match he had expected, no, wanted to happen. This was cold and Mark was never cold.

“Yeah. I mean, there are two ways I could not, but neither of them are going to happen, so there's no point,” he chuckled nervously. Mika's fingertips tapped a reassuring pattern on his shoulder and he took the ensuing silence as an opportunity to close his eyes and pretend that none of this had happened yet, or better yet that it would never happen, and wish that all of the sickness and damned petals and the look of complete and utter devastation in Mark’s eyes were all a fever dream.

“Thank you for telling us, Ethan,” Amy said finally, standing and reaching out a hand to help him up. To his surprise, once he was on his feet she wrapped him in a hug, somehow both stronger and more delicate than her troubled counterpart. Tears pricked at his eyes again and he hugged her back tightly, grateful for just… the way Amy was.

“You should go,” Mark said, finally looking up and meeting his eyes.

Ethan would never forget that look. It stayed burnt into the back of his eyelids for days, weeks, months even, gave him nightmares and woke him up screaming just to stop.

The chocolate depths held infinite sadness, a lonely grief that he could feel from several feet away. Puppy dog eyes, he thought briefly, but the notion left his mind as a single tear rolled down Mark's face.

“Okay,” he replied, a lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the disease. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“Never,” Mark replied, and did not look at the pair as they left.


	4. Soul Searching in a Black Cloud

If there was one thing in his life Ethan would never take back, it was the very love that drove his body to destroy itself from the inside out. He couldn’t imagine his life without Mark or picture himself as being anyone other than who he was at that very moment. If you asked Mark he would without hesitation say almost exactly the same thing, but with a more deadpan expression and minus that fateful L-word. 

Even this disease seemed predestined, since no one who knew about it was really that surprised. Amy had known about his childlike infatuation with Mark since the day they met, when she’d watched him blush fire-engine red at the mere sound of his name falling from Mark’s lips and thought it surprisingly cute and endearing, though she had never suspected it went beyond just an idolizing crush. 

And really, no one was surprised either when Mark holed himself up in his room for the next few days, only leaving for the bathroom and a brief meal occasionally. There had always been something special between the two, something no one could really describe. Some may even go so far as to call it love in a weird, bastardized way. 

If some random person were to look through the window of his room, they would see nothing. A dark space, messier than it had ever been, the only light coming from a single computer monitor replaying its screensaver motion over and over and over until it seemed to be the only thing it had ever done. If they stood there long enough they would be startled by the movement of a lump on the bed, realizing that the occupant of that forlorn room had been there all along. 

As for Mark himself, well... he was more than depressed. Coming to terms with his father’s death was one thing—it had been relatively sudden. Every emotion there was to feel had come much later and he’d had time to work through it. He’d had Ethan. 

Ethan, one of the few genuine bright spots in his life. Ethan, the kid he’d found ridiculously endearing at a panel and chosen to mentor. Ethan, the man whom he’d watched grow up and find his voice and find love... the man who never once let it slip that he’d been in love that whole time. 

How the fuck didn’t he notice? It was so obvious even before those goddamn petals landed on his living room floor. Every touch, every glance, every word now came into question as he racked his brain trying to think of a reason, any reason, that he’d never noticed. 

It was shame, he realized. He’d been ashamed to admit that the kid he’d basically adopted would do literally anything for him, HAD done literally everything for him, and that he had felt the same way for a while. 

The guilt, though, was the strongest. Though Mark could barely admit that he had, at one point in the early stages of their friendship, returned the feelings, the sensation crushing his chest with every breath now was much different. His love for Ethan had gone from an immature crush to the kind of lingering affection he would give to a younger brother after about six months and that, he knew, was what was killing him. 

Oh, God, he was killing him. 

Mark found himself curling into a tighter ball, trying to keep the burning inside him from leaking out of his eyes and failing miserably. He’d failed. The one thing he took the most pride in had become his biggest failure and worst regret. Ethan was going to die—was already dying—a slow, painful, torturous death and the only thing Mark wanted to do was scream. 

There are two ways to cure the deadly nightmare that is Hanahaki Disease. Either the object of the victim’s affections returns them genuinely, or the victim cuts the person out of their lives in every way for as long as they live. 

“... but neither of them are going to happen, so there's no point,” Ethan’s voice whispered in his head. 

His best fucking friend was going to die in a lot of pain because he couldn’t control that big heart of his, and the thought both hurt like hell and made him irrationally angry. 

“God fucking damn it,” Mark rasped to the dark, empty room, picking up his phone and squinting at it uncertainly. Speaking hurt worse than he’d expected and reminded him that water had not been high on his list of priorities for the past few days. “Fucking shit, Ethan, why do you have to do this to me? Why couldn’t you love anyone else?” 

Loving anyone else had never been in the equation, Ethan thought to himself, laying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. His chest had not stopped hurting since the incident at Mark’s, both in his lungs and in his heart. Haunted chocolate eyes ripped into his soul whenever he tried to sleep or film a video and his channel (and mental health) were on a steady decline because of it. 

Loving someone else could never happen when someone like Mark held the key to his life and happiness and gave it to him so freely and with such pleasure. He was doomed from the start, really, from the backflip that began the adventure, remembering the pride and stuttering heartbeat he felt as he saw the admiration and amusement in his idol’s eyes. God, fuck, those eyes, those same gorgeous eyes that now haunted him and never left him alone no matter how many times he tried to scrub them from his memory. 

Alone. That’s all he was these days. 

Mika was gone. 

She loved him more than anything or anyone else but after what had happened, she couldn’t bear to be with him any longer. It hurt too much to see him every day and know that one day, probably soon, he would slowly choke to death on the flowers blossoming in his airways. 

Not that he blamed her. The more people he opened up to, the less people were sticking around. It’s hard to be friends with a dead man walking. 

His phone chirped softly beside him, startling him out of his melancholy thoughts, and he turned his head to see a text from Amy of all people lingering on the screen. 

“How are you?” 

Three words, plain and simple, and yet he found himself crying, hot tears streaming silently down his face as his shoulders shook with the force of his sobs. He couldn’t find the strength to lie to her, not anymore, and so sent back probably the most cryptic message he’d ever written-- “I just am.” 

A second chime rang through the stillness, a familiar text tone that sent pain shooting through his body and stopped his tears in their tracks. 

“I’m sorry,” Mark’s text read. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, hope that’s okay. We should talk.” 

“Son of a bitch,” Ethan groaned, rubbing his sternum with a wince and dragging himself out of bed to stand in front of the mirror. He looked like death was left in a microwave for too long and emerged sick and crumpled. 

“Looking good, good looking” he muttered to his reflection, some stupid positive mantra habit he’d picked up from a yoga class a few months back, beyond caring how bad he looked and trying to curb the annoying racing of his heart that happened whenever Mark was there or coming around. “Wonder what he wants.” 


	5. To Live or Not to Live

“Dude, you look like absolute shit,” Ethan’s mouth said before his brain had time to catch up. He scanned Mark from head to toe, taking in the greasy hair and rumpled clothing and the dark circles under his eyes and feeling the pain in his chest worsen every second.

“You’re one to talk,” Mark replied, but there was no edge behind it. If it were any other time, any other situation, he would have kicked Ethan’s ass to therapy for looking that bad. But this was more than just depression. This was disease.

Ethan moved out of the way, allowing Mark into the dark living room. He tried very hard not to touch him, remembering with a harsh pang of guilt the pain and panic on Ethan’s face the last time he had, but couldn’t help brushing against his arm.  _ He’s gotten so thin. _

Not that there was much meat on his bones to spare anyway. He’d always been lean. Now the muscle was giving way to genuine thinness and neither man liked the change.

“You live like this?” Mark joked half-heartedly, carefully moving a pile of clothing off of the couch so he could sit. Ethan cringed and decided against turning on the light—it would only reveal the layer of dust on the mess that he lived in. No use cleaning if he’d be dead eventually, right?

“Nah, it’s just temporary,” he replied, sitting next to his friend on the couch and rubbing his chest. 

The pair sat in silence for a while, mentally dancing around the topic they knew they had to talk about at some point. Finally, Mark sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.  Unus Annus and quarantine had led to him growing it out far longer than he ever had and now it tumbled to his shoulders, chocolate brown and looking deliciously soft. Ethan’s hands fisted at his sides in response to that thought.

“I want to apologize for the other day,” his friend said quietly, staring at the floor. “I reacted inappropriately and didn’t give you the reaction that you deserved from me.”

“You reacted better than I expected, to be honest.”

“What did you expect from me?” Mark made eye contact now, and Ethan was disarmed by the helplessness in his friend’s face. “What more could I have done to make it worse?”

He swallowed hard, heat rising to his face. “You could have hated me.”

“Never.”

The word was spoken with such conviction that Ethan could have cried. It brought a temporary relief to the burning ache in his chest and that, in and of itself, told him that there was no lie, even when the pain came back fiercer than before.

“I mean, it isn’t every day--” he began, but Mark interrupted him.

“That I find out my best friend is dying because he loves me?”

“I... yeah,” he finished lamely, blushing and breathing deeply through his nose as his lungs spasmed for air around the growths in his veins. “I guess.” 

“I can’t love you in the same way,” Mark said softly, fidgeting with the fabric of his sweatpants and not noticing the increasing pain in his companion’s face. “But I do love you. You’re my best friend and my greatest accomplishment.”

Fucking Christ. He’d said it. He said the one thing Ethan prayed he never would, the thing he knew by instinct would hurt worse than anything.

Ethan closed his eyes, dizzy from the lack of oxygen as he felt his entire body convulse trying to expel the blockage in his lungs. “ Gonna need you to stop,” he wheezed, and gave a mighty cough. He felt something tear and a sharp pain wracked his chest, sending black spots across his vision.

Strong hands found his shoulders and dug deep into his skin, grounding him with their warmth and stopping him from slumping forward. “Breathe, please,” Mark’s voice begged, seeming at once so close and a million miles away.

The flower—for it was an entire flower this time—came from his throat slowly, as if dragged by a string, and tumbled down his chest to rest in his lap.

Ethan’s eyes, half closed and unfocused, wandered over Mark’s face, hazily tracing the tears running down his tanned face as he slipped sideways into his arms. “ M’tryin ,” he murmured.

“God fucking damn it, Ethan,” Mark whispered, holding him close and feeling his body shake as it tried to breathe. “Why’d you have to love me?”

“Couldn’t help it,” the younger man rasped. He liked it there against Mark’s chest. Maybe he’d just close his eyes for a moment, it couldn’t hurt. 

“Don’t you pass out on me,” Mark said, harsher than he meant to, and shook him into consciousness. Weak hands gripped his wrists and bleary eyes did their best to focus on his face.

“I love you,” Ethan slurred. “But I need you to let go of me.”

“What? Why... oh,” Mark realized, all at once. “Son of a bitch.”

“ M’sorry ,” he replied, and he meant it. Dying right there, feeling the rough skin of Mark’s hands and the warmth of his chest, sounded like heaven. But there was a wriggling terror in his chest, somewhere amongst the roots and vines of the deadly disease in his lungs, that forced his eyes open and made him breathe.

“It gets worse when you’re around me, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Ethan replied, sliding to the floor and putting his head between his knees. The endorphin rush from oxygen deprivation had worn off, leaving him sore and shaking. He looked defeated, at once infinitely older and younger than he really was. “Worse with touch, I think.”

“I can go--”

“Please don’t.”

The words were forceful enough to stop Mark in his tracks. “Ethan, I don’t want you to--”

“I’m  gonna die anyway, babe,” Ethan replied, falling back to the pet name out of habit and making himself wince. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want you to die at all, Eth. I would rather cut you out of my life completely and know you were alive and safe than watch you choke to death because you fell in love,” Mark snapped.

Ethan raised his eyes and smirked, exhausted. “ Awww , Mark. That’s sweet. But it only works if I do it, and you know that. I’ve made my choice and I have to live with it.”

The pair sat in morbid silence for a while, listening to the young man’s breathing grow stronger and more regular. 

“I wonder what death is like?” Ethan asked finally. Still on the couch, where Ethan couldn’t see him, Mark let his tears fall freely.


	6. Left on Read

_ I don’t want to die alone. _

Even though the words rang like the toll of a funeral bell in Mark’s mind, he couldn’t bring himself to see his friend. The mere thought of him sent guilt ripping through his body. If only he hadn’t talked to him that day, or let him do that backflip, this... this kid with his whole life ahead of him would live to do the great things Mark knew he was destined for.

If he buried himself in his work more than usual, it was easy to ignore the sense of impending disaster that was always peeking over his shoulder. At least until he spotted the  Unus Annus sweatshirt hanging in the closet, or the suit jacket with black glitter still thrown over one of the chairs in the guest room. Just last week he’d thrown those in a box in the garage, so now he wouldn’t have that distraction. Because that’s all they were. Distractions.

His phone pinged with a text from Ethan once a day, sometimes more, and it was always the same phrase that played in his head. He never read them, he couldn’t, because his greatest fear was that it would be the news that he dreaded the most.

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when, two months after Ethan had nearly died in his arms, his doorbell rang. “I’ve got it!” Amy called from the kitchen. Mark grunted a reply, absorbed in editing his latest project.

“Mark!”

Her scream echoed through the house like the shot of a gun, startling him out of his thoughts. “Wha...?”

His words trailed off as she raced into the living room, wide-eyed and near hysterics. “Mark, call 911, quick!”

“What? Why? What’s happening?” But he didn’t need to ask. He knew. The sinking feeling in his chest and the fear in Amy’s eyes told him what he would find if he went to the door, even as his shaking hands pressed the buttons on his phone, but he had to see for himself and ran into the foyer.

Sure enough, his best friend lay semiconscious on his doorstep, a piece of mail clutched in his hand like a lifeline, convulsing and turning slightly blue. “H-holy fuck,” Mark choked, dropping to his knees in horror. 

Ethan’s eyes were wide open and unseeing, seeming to stare directly into Mark’s soul and pinning him in place as if he were a butterfly on a board. He couldn’t move, couldn’t feel his body even as Amy wrenched the phone from his hand to speak to the concerned dispatcher. 

There was terror in those eyes. Pure, unbridled terror, as one who is seeing death will show. Mark’s hands were shaking, his whole body was trembling so hard he couldn’t stand, but he found himself crawling to his friend and rolling him into his side, trying to pound on his back. 

“Mark,” someone called through the fog that clouded his brain. “Mark!”

He snapped out of it and looked around to see Amy kneeling next to him. “What?!”

“Sweep his throat, it’s probably stuck!”

He swallowed hard, feeling hot tears running down his face, and steadied his hands. “I don’t know if I can,” he whispered.

“You have to, or he’ll suffocate,” she replied. The hysteria was gone from her voice and she appeared calm, though he knew that she was just as terrified as he was. 

“I’m so sorry, Ethan,” he murmured, prying open the younger man’s clenched jaws and reaching into his mouth. Finding the obstruction was easy—it was absolutely massive. Soft petals brushed Mark’s fingertips and he fought the instinctive urge to puke, instead pushing them down to get to the middle of the flower.

Finding it, he steeled his nerves and tugged.

Nothing happened. The flower did not move.

He tugged again, and this time felt resistance. What the...?

“Oh my fuck,” he gasped, startling Amy.

“What? What is it?” she demanded.

“There’s a fucking stem! It’s growing from the back of his throat!”

“Fucking pick it then! Pull hard!”

“I can’t, that’s  gonna fuck up his lungs!”

“Just DO IT!” she screamed, and he closed his eyes and pulled. A nasty snap echoed through the air and the massive flower came free, a good four inches of bloody stem dangling behind it. Ethan gave a shuddering gasp and stopped convulsing, instead coughing up more and more petals with sharp breaths inbetween.

Mark threw the flower aside and scooped the boy into his lap, holding him tightly and keeping his head elevated as he choked up those goddamned plants.

Finally, Ethan stopped coughing and simply focused on breathing, which had become so much harder in the last few minutes than he had ever thought was possible.

His chest was on fire and he felt like every breath he took was swimming through fluid to reach his lungs. Painful tingles were spreading from his chest throughout his body, what he now knew to be the roots of the  Hanahaki taking their final and deadly steps. 

“Just breathe, please,” Mark whispered, feeling his tears soak into Ethan’s hair and hearing sirens approaching. In response, Ethan lifted his hand and showed him the now-crumpled piece of mail he had been holding.

“I was supposed to be your best man,” he slurred. Though unimportant in comparison, it was the only thing he could focus on. “You promised.”

Beside them, Amy dropped the phone and began to cry softly, turning her face away in shame. Mark’s eyes were glued to the envelope, a festive blue one with a pretty “Congratulations!” sticker on the front. In big, bold handwriting, it was addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Fischbach.”


	7. Dying Breath

For just one moment, Ethan could almost believe that he was back home, having just woken up from a nasty nightmare where every breath was the labor of a thousand years and the  man he loved was still his best friend. Spencer would soon come barreling through the door and cover him in kisses, followed by a still-sleepy Mika looking for some morning snuggles before work.

She would cozy up under his arm and fall back asleep for a while, and Spencer would lay across his legs with utter contentment for a few minutes as they all basked in the peace and quiet of the early morning sunshine.

And then, with the grace of Icarus falling to the sea, he woke up.

Beeping machines assailed his ears and he flinched, feeling wires tugging at his chest and neck as he did. There was something in his nose that reached down his throat and he nearly gagged before remembering the biggest problem of all—the flower stem.

It had been there for a week or so. He’d first seen it when brushing his teeth one morning, a tiny green bud poking up from the back of his throat, and oh boy had he panicked. There was nothing that could be done without risking serious internal injury if he tried to remove it himself, and so he lived with it, growing painfully aware of it every time he swallowed or took a breath.

Just one more reminder of the death that was coming for him, faster than ever these days.

He had stopped hacking up petals. That much, at least, was a relief, though he knew it meant that there was not much time left. Mark had stopped responding to him, stopped talking, which is why he...

Oh.

The memories came back in a flash. Approaching the door, seeing the envelope, the panic as the flower suddenly bloomed in his throat with the betrayal that burned in his chest.

Ethan let his head roll to the side, feeling tears of humiliation slide down his cheeks. He’d wanted to die at home, with Spencer, by himself, not being a burden to anyone. Instead... instead he’d probably completely traumatized the two people left in his life.

Scratch that.

The last two people to leave his life.

You can hardly call someone who ignores you for two months your friend, after all. Can you?

He opened his eyes and almost yelped in shock. There sat Mark, arms crossed and head back against the chair, dozed off like something out of a cheesy teenage romance film. Holy fucking SHIT did that hurt, worse than anything that had come so far, and his mouth was wrenched open in a hoarse cry as he clutched at his chest.

Snapping awake with ease, Mark pressed a cord with a red button into Ethan’s palm. “Morphine,” he murmured, not making eye contact. 

Ethan nearly crushed the button with the force of his squeeze and prompted Mark to reach back over and pry his fingers off. “No overdoses today, sorry,” he said.

A tight, hot feeling spread through Ethan’s body and he tensed up noticeably, finally earning him eye contact. “Relax. The feeling will go away in a second and you’ll feel better.”

True to his word, the heat vanished, replaced by a strange numbing sensation that felt like cotton in his veins. Cotton in his brain, too, because his mouth lolled open stupidly and the brain power necessary to form sentences abandoned him completely.

Mark sighed and rubbed his face. “What the hell happened, Ethan?”

Of course, he was met with no answer, but he continued on anyway as if he hadn’t asked. 

“You scared the absolute fuck out of me. I don’t see you for two months, then all of a  sudden you’re dying on my doorstep? Holding my mail? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I tried,” Ethan slurred. “You...  wouldn ’ talk  t’me .”

Ah. Right. Fuck.

“Okay, you’re right, but that’s because I didn’t want you to keep contact with me. I wanted to see you live, god damn it. I was trying to take the adult way out of the situation and fucking save you.” Mark’s voice cracked hard and he cleared his throat, focusing on the floor again to avoid embarrassing tears. All of the frustration and anger and guilt of the past few months had crept into his body as he waited anxiously for his best friend to wake up, and now he was nearly ready to explode with it.

“ Didn ’  wanna be saved, Mark,” Ethan replied, reaching out to touch his arm. “ Jus wanted t’see you.”

“You’re acting like a child, Ethan,” Mark snapped.

Ethan blinked, stunned. Somewhere in his morphine-clouded brain a voice screamed at him to stop the conversation, to fake passing out or something to avoid what was going to be said, but he couldn’t. 

“You couldn’t get over a crush, like a goddamn teenager, so now I’m stuck with watching you fucking die. Is this what you wanted? Having your hero crying over your dead body, feeling like it was his fault you died so young?” Stop talking, stop talking, Mark’s brain was screaming, but he couldn’t stop. It was like someone had put his brain on autopilot and he couldn’t take back the controls.

“You think I want to die?” Ethan demanded, fighting back the morphine fog. “ Y’think I wanted to do this to you? Or anyone? I idolize you, Mark, I live for you. You saved my life and gave me a second  chance, you gave me everything I have. If anything, I want to live as long as possible because I love what we built as a team. But through all of this fucking disease, no one has once taken me seriously or thought about what I wanted.”

“Maybe nobody takes you seriously because you never fucking grew up.”

Silence fell and Ethan’s hand snapped back as if he’d been slapped. His eyes were having trouble focusing, and the machine beside him began beeping frantically as Mark realized the gravity of what he’d just said. “Fuck, Ethan, I didn’t mean--”

“Sir, you need to leave. Visiting hours are over and this patient is in distress,” a blue-scrubbed doctor said firmly, entering the room with a clipboard.

Mark stood and turned to go, chest aching with guilt and sadness, but stopped in his tracks as weak fingers grabbed his wrist. 

“I love you,” Ethan whispered, letting his head fall back against the pillow.

“That’s your problem,” Mark replied, having never hated himself more in his life, and left.


	8. Too Little, Too Late

“You said WHAT?”

Amy’s shriek bounced around the room like a ping pong ball and Mark winced as she stared at him incredulously. “I didn’t mean to, I just...”

“You told the person who loves you more than anything, who dropped his entire life to do what you asked, that this entire thing was his fault for not growing up?”

“When you say it like that--”

His head snapped to the side with the force of her slap and the noise echoed through the room, leaving a stunned silence in its wake. The fury in her eyes was unparalleled and he felt genuine fear looking up into her face. “How fucking  dare you,” she whispered. “I have never seen you be so selfish. You really projected your own guilt onto a dying man and now you’re trying to justify it. I absolutely hate you.”

“Amy--”

“Don’t say a word. You’ve already said too much.”

The front door slammed behind her and left him sitting in the chair, cheek still stinging, chest heaving with unshed sobs as the reality of what had happened crashed into him full force. “Son of a bitch,” he choked, reaching for his phone. It had been an hour, just an hour. Nothing would have  changed, he could always go back and make things right. Ethan would forgive him, he always did.

As he dialed the number for the hospital, Mark was overtaken by a sudden panic, causing his phone to drop to the floor and shatter. His hands shook and his brain went completely white with static, the only thought coherent enough to understand being “Ethan”. 

“Fuck, no, no  no no no,” he muttered, sprinting to the hallway for his keys and barreling out the door. “Hold on until I get there, you have to.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no rooms with an ‘Ethan Nestor’. Are you sure you have the right hospital?” the receptionist asked patiently, eyeing his fidgeting with mild concern.

“I’m sure. Um, he might be under Ethan Nestor-Darling, it’s hyphenated,” Mark replied, eyes combing the waiting room for any sign of Ethan as if he’d be out with everyone else.

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth and she took a deep breath. “Are you Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“Wait here please.”

Within seconds, a nurse was by his side, and his heart sank into the floor. Her mascara had smudged down her cheeks in clear tear tracks and her eyes were puffy and red from crying. “Mr. Fischbach?” she asked shakily, hands twisting nervously in front of her.

“Yes...” he whispered, barely able to hear over the ringing in his ears.

“I’m so sorry to deliver this news, but Mr. Nestor passed away a few moments ago.”

The entire world spun to a halt, except for that room, which spun violently in front of Mark’s eyes. It couldn’t be. He’d just been there, he’d just seen him, he’d been alive and talking, there was no way he could be dead.

“He... he can’t be...” he choked.

“I’m afraid that he is gone, sir,” the nurse replied, tearing up again. 

The strength left his legs and Mark collapsed to his knees, the ache in his chest replaced by a gnawing, bottomless hole that threatened to swallow him completely. He couldn’t breathe, could barely see, nothing made sense... perhaps, he thought briefly, this is what Ethan felt as he...

The noise that escaped his throat silenced everyone in the waiting room, even the sickest of infants. The sun had gone out, everything was barren and cold, everything sucked into the void left by Ethan’s death. There was nothing left. 

The nurse waved down a passing doctor and together, they brought Mark into a separate room, where they placed him carefully in a chair. He stared vacantly at the wall, barely registering his surroundings, completely numb and peering into the abyss inside his chest. 

“Sir?” the nurse asked timidly, sitting beside him.

He slowly looked to her face, focusing his eyes just enough to bring her features into view. 

“I know that this is a lot to process, but Mr. Nestor specifically added you as his medical proxy, which means that you have every right to know what happened if you wish.”

“Please,” he rasped.

“Shortly after his last guest left, he asked for a pen and paper to write a letter. When it was finished, he went into severe respiratory distress. He was unconscious by the time doctors found him, since he had unhooked his machines, and there was nothing they could do.”

Mark closed his eyes and his head fell back as tears finally made an appearance, falling hard and fast with no effort to stop them. “Do they know what caused it?”

“He had extremely late-stage  Hanahaki disease, the worst case we’ve ever seen. He should have been dead weeks ago, but he held on for something.”

For me, Mark realized. He didn’t want to die alone, so he held... oh god. “Oh god, he held out for so long,” Mark said out loud, hands fisting at his side. “And he still died alone. I left him alone, I left him so scared and helpless, he was just a kid...”

The void in his chest disappeared, replaced by the most crushing grief he had ever felt. Someone was pounding his ribs to dust and squeezing the life out of every organ one by one as he gasped for breath between sobs, and he couldn’t complain. He deserved it for what he had done, the fate he had sentenced his best friend to.

“The letter was to you,” the nurse whispered after a while, wiping away the fresh tears that had fallen as Mark cried. She had been the one to find him and felt more than responsible for the painful death that he had suffered.

She would never, in her entire life, forget the image of his face, twisted in a gruesome death mask of terror, a huge white flower blooming from his mouth, and the knowledge that he had indeed suffered immensely. In her heart she knew that this man would share her pain, and so she felt for him.

“I can’t read it,” he replied, panicked. “I can’t, I don’t want to know what it says, my last words to him were horrible and all he ever did was love me.”

She set the piece of folded paper down beside him and got to her feet. “I understand. Please, at least take it with you. Since he had no family here, you may need to contact his next of kin, but our staff will let you know.”

She paused, listening to the pained hiccupping sobs that pulled at her heart, before she spoke again. “I am so sorry for your loss. He is in a better place now."


	9. Bonded Pair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it folks! Thank you for all your kind words, I hope I was able to wrap this up in a way that felt right! Please let me know how I did!
> 
> Also, the song used in this chapter is "Two" by Sleeping At Last. Here is the link for those who want to listen along:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrDzd4ufypE&list=PLfBjcYDMPZpNIp1y8bvEFnkPAanv02A04&index=309

“Ethan told me all about you, Mark. I’m so glad he had you.”

“He was lucky to have such a wonderful friend.”

“Thank you for being with him through all of this. Everyone else left him, you know, and we didn’t know he was so sick until... well.”

“He loved you very much you know. Your friendship meant the world to him. His room back home still has those old Markiplier posters on the wall.”

Every condolence, every word of sympathy, shot straight through Mark’s chest like a crossbow bolt. He didn’t deserve them, didn’t deserve any of this. Everything being said was a lie. When Ethan had needed him most, he’d abandoned him with hardly a second thought, only thinking of how to minimize his own pain and not thinking about what that must have been like.

Mark stood by the entrance of the church, accepting greetings and condolences stoically in his beautiful white suit. It felt claustrophobic and completely wrong to wear—the tiny “Annus” embroidered into the inside seemed to burn into his chest, a reminder that his  Unus lay in a casket across the  wide-open chapel.

The worst part of the day by far had been meeting Ethan’s parents for the first time. His mother had hugged him tightly and thanked him for taking care of their son—to his surprise, Ethan had told them up until the end that Mark was taking great care of him and not to worry. Even when he’d been abandoned, he’d never given up hope. 

“ _ You could have hated me.” _

_ “Never.” _

Organ music interrupted his train of thought and he quickly sat down in the back, not wanting to stand out too much in his white suit. It wasn’t appropriate for a funeral at all, but he couldn’t imagine going in anything else. It was a reminder of the last thing they had worked on together, their pet project that had made them better friends than ever before everything went to hell.

The sermon had begun, but he couldn’t focus, mind wandering to the body in the casket. He hadn’t seen it yet, but he remembered the feeling of the flower in his hand as he ripped it from Ethan’s throat that fateful day and could only imagine what fresh hell had finally finished the course of the deadly nightmare.

“In compliance with the late Ethan Nestor’s final wishes, I invite Mark Fischbach to the pulpit to sing a pre-selected piece of music,” the priest said, startling Mark out of his thoughts. What the hell? 

It must have been on the paper that was burning a hole in his chest pocket. Somehow, someone knew what he’d wanted, and God only knew why he’d wanted Mark to sing. He got up and approached, feeling more than a little awkward and out of place, and was handed a guitar and a single sheet of music. His eyes roamed the audience and landed on Amy, who gave him a reassuring smile. She had been his rock since Ethan’s death, eventually forgiving him for what he considered to be the worst mistake in his life.

He took a deep breath and looked at the paper. The chords were simple and sparse, meant to just accentuate his voice, and the song itself... oh god, the song. He cleared his throat and began quietly, barely audible to the audience.

“Sweetheart, you look a little tired   
When did you last eat?”

His voice caught in his throat and tears burned in his eyes, recalling one day where he had said almost this exact thing and was greeted with sheepish laughter and a vague answer, to which Mark responded by making chicken n’ dumplings for dinner and watching him eat.

“Come in and make yourself right at home,   
Stay as long as you need.   
Tell me, is something wrong?   
If something’s wrong, you can count on me.   
You know I’ll take my heart clean apart if it helps yours beat.”

Ethan coming to his house at three in the morning, upset over a video, or just needing some company. Ethan, eating his food and watching his movies and existing in that space with him to combat the loneliness that he never stopped feeling. The tears flowed freely and Mark tried his hardest to blink them away so he could continue the song. 

“It's okay if you can't find the words   
Let me take your coat and this weight off of your shoulders   
  
Like a force to be reckoned with,   
A mighty ocean or a gentle kiss   
I will love you with every single thing I have.   
Like a tidal wave I'll make a mess,   
Or calm waters if that serves you best,   
I will love you without any strings attached.   
  
It's okay if you can't catch your breath,   
You can take the oxygen straight out of my own chest.”

He could barely breathe, desperately longing to give the lifeless form in the casket the oxygen in his body to bring him back. All he wanted was to say he was sorry for being so stupid, and that he’d love him no matter what, but it was far too little too late. He would never get the chance. Unus Annus should have taught him that, Mark realized as he tried hard to breathe during the brief instrumental part of the song. Never take the good in your life for granted, because it can be ripped away in seconds.

“I know exactly how the rule goes--   
Put my mask on first.   
No, I don't want to talk about myself,   
Tell me where it hurts.   
I just want to build you up, build you up   
'Til you're good as new,   
And maybe one day, I will get around   
To fixing myself, too.   
  
I don't even know where to start.   
Already tired of trying to recall when it all fell apart.   
I just want to love you, to love you, to love you well   
I just want to learn how, somehow to be loved myself.”

Ethan must have written this for it to cut so deeply. The words were barely audible, some members of the audience straining to hear him over the soft strumming of the guitar, but he couldn’t care less anymore. These were Ethan’s final words to him, everything he’d tried to say so desperately for months while flowers grew in the passageways of his lungs, the ultimate understanding of who they were as friends and as a pair. 

“Like a force to be reckoned with,   
A mighty ocean or a gentle kiss,   
I will love you without any strings attached.   
What a privilege it is to love,   
A great honor to hold you up.   
  
Like a force to be reckoned with,   
A mighty ocean or a gentle kiss,   
I will love you with every single thing I have.   
Like a tidal wave I'll make a mess,   
Or calm waters if that serves you best.   
I will love you without any strings attached...   
I will love you without a single string attached.”

The final chord echoed through a silent church as Mark carefully put the guitar back on its stand, trying with all his might to hold back the tears that threatened to make a scene in front of everyone. He was fortunate, then, that the priest ended the service after, and people began to file out. The mood was somber—something had been witnessed between the dead and the living that no one could really understand.

Mark waited until there was no one left but Amy to collapse into a pew, shoulders shaking from quiet sobs. 

“That was his goodbye, you know,” she said softly, stroking his hair.

“I know,” he hiccupped, “but he shouldn’t have had to have a goodbye.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so she gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead and left the sanctuary to begin ushering the guests to the lunch that had been prepared.

His last goodbye...

The letter in his pocket burned again, and he took it out with shaking hands and approached the casket. He hadn’t had the heart to see the body earlier, but there it was in all its simplicity, dressed in the black suit with the glittery jacket and the tiny “ Unus ” embroidered inside. Mark’s mirror image, the second half of the pair. Ethan’s face was calm, marred only by the gigantic white flower protruding from his mouth that the funeral staff were unable to remove.

Mark sank to his knees by the coffin and reached inside, taking Ethan’s cold, lifeless hand. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “You didn’t deserve any of this. You didn’t deserve what I did to you. I didn’t deserve you at all.”

He carefully unfolded the note and read it silently to himself. For some inexplicable reason, he felt the need to have Ethan close as he did.

** Dear Mark, **

** I’m sure you think this is going to be some sappy apology letter or something. Well, it isn’t. I don’t apologize for anything except looking at your mail,  ** ** cuz ** ** that’s a felony. I think. I loved loving you just as much as I loved being friends with you and I wouldn’t have traded that for the world. You told me that I’ve never grown up, and I think you were right. Growing up means giving up some kind of innocence and the things we attached to as kids, and since I was still a teenager when I met you, that would have meant leaving all of this behind. **

** You are a wonderful person and a wonderful friend, even if you say things that hurt when you’re angry and frustrated. I don’t hold it against you. I forgive you, and I want YOU to forgive you. If you’re reading this, I was right in thinking I was going to die. It’s so weird writing about it. I was so scared for so long, but I don’t think I’m scared of death anymore. Of dying, yes, but when it’s over I will be relieved. I’m in pain, and I’m ready to go. **

** I wrote you a song to sing at my funeral, and I know you’ll do it  ** ** cuz ** ** you can never tell me no. I’ve been working on it for over a year and it seems fitting that it’ll be our final send-off to each other. I’ll always be the  ** ** Unus ** ** to your Annus. **

** I love you, asshole. **

** Ethan **

Mark laughed as he cried, clutching the paper like a lifeline. He was forgiven. Ethan heard the horrible things he’d said and seen right through them, and even though he was dying his last act was do just... be Ethan. To love and forgive.

He stood shakily and refolded the paper, tucking it back into his pocket and looking down at Ethan’s peaceful face. “I love you too,” he said softly, and left.

With only God and the musty air of the chapel as its witness, the flower protruding from Ethan’s mouth gave a shudder and closed its petals, retracting back into his throat and leaving him to rest in peace.


End file.
